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Paolo Perrotta

Metaprogramming Ruby: Program Like the Ruby Pros 1st Edition

by Paolo Perrotta (Author)

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Everyone in the Ruby world seems to be talking about metaprogramming--how you can use it to remove duplication in your code and write elegant, beautiful programs. Now you can get in on the action as well.

This book describes metaprogramming as an essential component of Ruby. Once you understand the principles of Ruby, including the object model, scopes, and eigenclasses, you're on your way to applying metaprogramming both in your daily work and in your fun, after-hours projects.

Learning metaprogramming doesn't have to be difficult or boring. By taking you on a Monday-through-Friday workweek adventure with a pair of programmers, Paolo Perrotta helps make mastering the art of metaprogramming both straightforward and entertaining.

The book is packed with:

Pragmatic examples of metaprogramming in action, many of which come straight from popular libraries or frameworks, such as Rails.
Programming challenges that let you experiment and play with some of the most fun, "out-there" metaprogramming concepts.
Metaprogramming spells--34 practical recipes and idioms that you can study and apply right now, to write code that is sure to impress.

Whether you're a Ruby apprentice on the path to mastering the language or a Ruby wiz in search of new tips, this book is for you.

ISBN-10

1934356476
ISBN-13

978-1934356470
Edition

1st
Publisher

Pragmatic Bookshelf
Publication date

February 25, 2010
Language

English
Dimensions

7.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches
Print length

296 pages
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Sandi Metz
156
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paolo Perrotta has more than ten years of experience as a developer and writer. He worked for domains ranging from embedded to enterprise software, computer games, and web applications. These days, Paolo coaches agile teams for Yoox, a large Internet fashion shop, and teaches Java to developers throughout Europe. He lives in Bologna, Italy, with his girlfriend and a cat. He loves Ruby.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pragmatic Bookshelf; 1st edition (February 25, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 296 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1934356476
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1934356470
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.35 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 1 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,576,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #119 in Ruby Programming
- #908 in Object-Oriented Design
- #3,262 in Internet & Telecommunications

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48 ratings

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Paolo Perrotta

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Paolo Perrotta speaks and writes about software development. He worked as a developer all around the world, in domains that range from embedded to enterprise software, computer games, and web applications. He is the author of Metaprogramming Ruby, Programming Machine Learning, and the Git courses on Pluralsight. He has a basecamp in Bologna, Italy.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5

48 global ratings

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Peter M. Goldstein

Should really be titled "Thinking in Ruby"

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on April 8, 2010

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I've read quite a few Ruby books and this is one of the best. The author very effectively does a number of things in this book:

i) Highlights the conceptual differences between Ruby and other currently popular languages

ii) Shows how those conceptual differences are expressed in programming constructs by walking the reader through a number of small but realistic example problems

iii) Reviews internal details of a number of pieces of real-world software (most notably Rails) to show how the authors of these packages use the techniques he describes to solve their problems

iv) Provides a number of helpful and applicable guidelines on how to 'think in Ruby'

v) Generates a GoF style catalog of implementation patterns

vi) Skewers the notion that 'metaprogramming' is any different than regular programming

After finishing this book I have a real appreciation of the techniques the author describes, and how they can be used to write flexible, powerful, and maintainable software. Before reading this book I was aware of a number of these techniques, but I didn't necessarily understand how they could be effectively used to solve real problems. Now I do. The book truly covers how to think in Ruby - how to naturally solve problems in Ruby, as opposed to adapting techniques commonly used in languages from the C/C++/Java lineage.

The one major criticism I had of Metaprogramming Ruby was the 'fanboy' tone that permeates a lot of the text. Frequently the author seems more interested in getting you to agree with him that Ruby is great than in conveying the concepts being discussed. There are a lot of gratuitous slams of other languages (especially Java) that were frankly unnecessary and distracted from the book. Had the tone of those comparisons been a little more highbrow and a little less schoolyard, this would have been a better book.

Overall rating: 4.5 stars

53 people found this helpful

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India

Would buy again! Great book! Great condition!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 3, 2022

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Loves buying used from the organization. Boom was in great shape. Love the book too!

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T.S.

VERY Obnoxious to read, but good content!

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 18, 2011

Verified Purchase

If you want to learn in detail how Metaprogramming Ruby works, by all means: buy this book, it is very useful!

The content of the book is excellent! The techniques described are very useful, and the author uses mostly good examples to illustrate the use of the different recipes. As a side-note, I also recommend the screencast series by PragProg.com about Metaprogramming Ruby. The book has three chapters which cover how Metaprogramming is used in the Rails framework, which is also very useful.

So far, so good, BUT......

The downside of this book is the writing style -- I'm quoting from orangekay's review here on Amazon:
[...] it's written in a really annoying tone that attempts to present said information as a story.
That story is very boring, gets old after the first paragraph, and makes it very difficult to find
the code you want amidst the sea of useless prose.

I can only second that statement! It is extremely annoying to read this book because of the stupid side-story, and it is very hard to find the relevant concepts later. The names of the concepts/recipes discussed in the book are mostly badly chosen, which is both annoying and confusing later.

I'm wondering why this style was chosen.. to add pages? It's so annoying that I feel tempted to take a big fat black marker and x-out all this junk from the silly side-story. If I had this in an editable electronic form, I would re-format the content!

I wish the author would take these comments to heart, and in the next version of the book, would follow a standard format, e.g. a "Cook-Book" approach, to discuss the techniques described in this book -- without a side-story!

If you want to learn in detail how Metaprogramming Ruby works, by all means: buy this book, it is very useful!

I would give this book 4 stars, but because of the obnoxious writing style I rate it as 3 stars.

4 people found this helpful

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Kindle Customer

Best Book I've Read on Ruby

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 10, 2013

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This book gets to the heart of what makes Ruby such an amazing language. It is also a great example of why reading an in-depth discussion on a topic in (e)book form can be far more valuable than spending the same amount of time researching the topic online.

The author starts by letting you know the ever-important "whys" around the language's origin & design; many of which I didn't know despite programming in Ruby for many years. Building on these basics, the author presents a coherent view of how to use the unique features of the language to become much more effective at software development. He extends this with example after example of how the world's best have done exactly that in Ruby's popular frameworks & gems -- including the core components of Ruby on Rails and ActiveRecord.

A few reviews I saw before reading the book mentioned the story-based narrative was distracting. While I can completely see this point of view, and the author is a developer not a novelist for sure, the story did serve as a solid tool to connect the various topics.

Highly, highly recommended.

One person found this helpful

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p shelley

One of the best Ruby books I've ever read

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 12, 2013

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The book contains great practical examples of how to use metaprogramming, taking you through basic designs and improving them incrementally with concepts from the text. I found this easy to understand and useful from a process standpoint. Like many others, I'd used Ruby metaprogramming many times before without fully understanding what I was doing. The book filled in many missing details for me. For the first time I felt I understood the Ruby object model. I actually dreamed of the object model after reading the book, seeing all of the parts line up. In contrast to some other reviewers, I like how the book weaves a story about two fictional coworkers as it explicates metaprogramming concepts. The light-hearted side story made it super readable for me since I enjoy narrative. The storyline kept me interested and made the text less dry. In conclusion, this is an excellent book that I will return to again and again. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to put the pieces together of Ruby Metaprogramming.

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Ivo Jesus

Mind-bending!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 7, 2013

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This is a mind bending book. I already had o little crush on Ruby but after this book, I'm completely in love!
The book is clear, it has a funny way of introducing things and the whole "lets tell a story about this" kind of approach just makes it seem like I'm not reading a technical book but a story book.
This book helped me understand how many ruby gems do things, especially ActiveRecord, and helped me be a better programmer.
Now I'm so much into the metaprogramming concept that any language that doesn't support it, I'm not interested!

dgt79

A very good book on Ruby

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 8, 2010

Verified Purchase

This is the best Ruby book I came across as it explains the concepts behind Ruby in a very easy to understand way. Besides, the book is written in a very similar style to Head First - Design Patterns, which is funny and easy to follow. I was also pleased to see that it's up to date with Ruby 1.9.

Chris

Wer dieses Buch liest, versteht, wie Ruby wirklich funktioniert.

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on July 7, 2013

Verified Purchase

Das Buch erklärt zwar - wie der Titel sagt - viele Tricks aus der Metaprogramming-Zauberkiste. Das wirklich wertvolle an diesem Buch finde ich jedoch, dass es die beste und gründlichste Erklärung des Ruby Objekt-Modells enthält, die ich bisher gefunden habe.

Diese Buch hat mir enorm geholfen, alle Ruby-spezifischen Konzepte wie Singleton Classes, Scopes, Klassenobjekte, method_missing, method lookup, include/extend, ancestor chain, class_eval/instance_eval etc wirklich zu verstehen und sicher anwenden zu können.

Im hinteren Teil gibts es dazu eine handliche Referenz, die typische Idiome und Patterns erklärt (der Autor nennt sie "Spells"), die man in Ruby-Code häufig antrifft und die die eigene Arbeit erleichtern.

Wer Ruby wirklich verstehen will, sollte dieses Buch unbedingt anschauen und sich nicht vom Titel abschrecken lassen.

One person found this helpful

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N.Piaschinski

Einführung in "Metaprogramming Ruby" gelungen

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on June 1, 2014

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Nachdem ich ein deutsches Handbuch in Einführung Ruby und Rails gelesen hatte, waren für mich noch zu viele Fragen offen. Schließlich möchte (muss) man ja verstehen, wie die Methoden, Klassen und Objekte in Ruby miteinander funktionieren.

Das Kindle-Buch "Metaprogramming Ruby" hat für mich diese große Lücke geschlossen. Auch wenn man in der englischen Sprache nicht ganz zu Hause ist, ist dieses Buch - umrahmt von einer kleinen Alltagsgeschichte aus dem Büro (Workshop) - sehr gut zu lesen.

Im Rahmen eines Workshops in Form von Aufgaben werden hier die verschiedensten Methoden/Klassen/Objekte und die Funktionsweise innerhalb von Ruby dargestellt.

Auf jeden Fall macht es Lust auf mehr... Also von meiner Seite eine klare Kaufempfehlung!

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alex

Imprescindible si programas en Ruby

Reviewed in Spain 🇪🇸 on June 24, 2014

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Libro imprescindible si programas en Ruby. Lo mejor es que su lectura se hace bastante entretenida, cosa rara en libros técnicos. Un 10.

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